October 27

Back to school! The first time we can say that here in the Sustainable Agriculture program. This morning I arrived early at HQ on dala once again. I really am becoming so confident in taking the dala dala, people dont even stare and say 'mzungu' anymore! In fact, yesterday, two women looked back at me and one said mzungu and the other said mwafrika, as if they were debating my background! I smiled and let them think it over, although Im sure everyone knew the one who said mzungu was probably right. Maybe even one of my biggest regrets of being here is not taking dala more often. I've had some great experiences (and good Lord, lots of exercise) walking around town, but I think taking a dala dala would have been a nicer experience if I'd been on it more often while living in Mama Elly's house. Its like a surprise everyday, this morning I was on a van with about 5 Maasai men with sticks and the whole nine! Plus, its really neat when I'm able to speak Swahili to the conductor to have him let me off, ask for my change, ask him where we are, etc. People usually laugh, and even some that speak English ask me where I learned to say these things in Swahili, what I'm doing in Tanzania. Often, if they're creepy I lie and say I'm from Maputo in Mozambique, and that I speak Portuguese, so I get respect for being sort of African and also accounts for my ability to speak a little Swahili. It's a good alibi, really.

At Montessori Infinity School, we were set to make a compost pile today with the students. They were told to gather the materials yesterday, and if you follow my blog regularly, you'll know that no one ever listens when we ask them to gather the materials beforehand for the compost pile. In addition, because there were so many of them we could have been able to make two mega compost piles if they'd gathered the proper materials but time got the best of them and there were only enough materials for one pile. An integral part of the compost pile is of course, manure. Very many of the girls refused to get the buckets of manure for the pile, nor pick it up when we were building the pile. It was clear, they had pretty much no experience in agriculture. As our counterparts urged everyone to participate, (I mean making compost is actually kind of fun, when I do demo's I always compare it to making a cake) some of the girls simply refused to help, just putting their hands behind their backs and shaking their heads no. Others just sat under the tree taking shade, watching. Pfft, and I always seem to be made fun of when I work in front of villagers.

As we were working it was also clear some of the males' interests in the project, the same boy who asked our counterpart that inappropriate question about gender came up to me as I was speaking and asked me if I was married, because he was interested. Everyone, again, laughed and ignored the lesson and frustrated our volunteers.

While the others were gathering for chai in our break, I went to a classroom of the younger preschool students with a counterpart. These kids we've seen all week and are always excited to see foreigners. There was no teacher present in the room, and all the students were jumping around the classroom with the door closed and some were pushing and fighting each other. Some were standing on top of tables, and then there were a few that were seated quietly at their chairs in the midst of all the noise. Our counterpart was able to quiet down the children (after about 15 minutes) and got them in their seats. He started teaching them a song in English which got them all excited. Everyone was engaged and singing and dancing, and I was so impressed at the change of environment in such a short amount of time. I didn't understand where this teacher was, and why she left a room full of nursery school students unsupervised. If we hadn't come in, they'd pretty much be at each other's throats. Soon, one of the kids was dancing too close to another and a fight broke out. Our counterpart walked over and untangled the children from each other, pulling one upside down by his leg which lightened the air and made everyone laugh. We proceeded to sing one more song, and then left the classroom with the kids following us out. I had to ask, why were these kids left alone? Apparently, even though this is a private school and the best option for parents around here, the quality of teachers is very poor. And then I was reminded that our students are studying to become teachers. That explained a lot.

After the lesson, we again went back to the office to continue our food drying training. We cut up some tomatoes and carrots, and worked with similar experiments as yesterday; dry drying, wet drying and salt brine drying and laid the vegetables out to dry in the garden. Today, GSC was hosting a group of speakers from South Africa in their head office here, doing a series of lectures called "Gardening God's Way", and we were all curious about what was being discussed there. One of our trainers came up and already told us his thoughts on the lecture--they were lecturing on not tilling or digging too much to tarnish God's great Earth. We laughed--having worked in Namanga where the soil is so red, cakey and dry you have to dig and till about 3 meters for anything to live--that his man was lecturing Tanzanians about not tilling their soil. They are going to be here all week, and I would love to hear more about what else they will discuss.